Trip Jodi visits the Foothill Camp, Coorg with Stay On Skill
On a memorable trip to Coorg, we found a treasure for life.
Location — “The Foot Hill Camp”.
All of us would have imagined staying in a forest camp — surrounded by trees, soothing chirps of birds, cool weather, and the scenic beauty of the mountains. Now add to that delicious authentic local cuisine —wouldn’t that be really awesome?!
Guess what, we just spent our last few days in one such place — The Foothill Camp in Coorg.
Staying in camps is a wonderful idea, but I have seen a lot of my friends being a little hesitant about it. Fortunately for us, we got to know about this camp from a trusted source — StayOnSkill.
Stay On Skill helps skilled experts connect with local hosts who are willing to learn or benefit from the skills of the expert, in exchange of providing free stay and breakfast. Isn’t that awesome? We traded our photography and blogging skills to get a 4 days and 3 nights stay at this wonderful camp.
DAY 1
We reached the campsite at 5pm after a bike ride of approx 350km (i.e from Coimbatore to Coorg). Our wonderful host and the owner of Foothill Camp, Ashith Achappa was there to welcome us. Ashith is a nature lover, a cycling enthusiast, and an eco-tourism promoter.
His campsite is a visual heaven. Truly beautiful, surrounded by trees and mountains on all sides. As per Ashith, there are more than 60 varieties of trees around the place — forming a mini forest of sorts. The tents are very clean and well maintained. They have an extra thatched roof setup, as well as basements. Yes, basements! Isn’t that amazing?!
The campsite is not just beautiful, but alive and full of life. The trees all around seemed like they were watching you with a joyful eye.
As the sun shaded out, Ashit started lighting lanterns all around the tents. The lights of the lantern gave a romantic feel to the environment.
DAY 2
Early mornings you wont need an alarms to help you wake up, rather your eyes automatically open with the sweet rays of the beautiful dawn and the melodious chorus of the birds.
We were all fresh with the cool climate of Coorg.
We took up cycles, which are available in abundance at the camp, and rode to Namdroling monastery, Nisargadhama and few more touristy attractions nearby.
The Namdroling monastery looks like a little Tibet.
We roamed there hearing the chanting of mantras and the rhythmic prayers, interacting with the monks. There was some powerful energy that we could feel in the chants and the beats of drums that accompanied them.
After a while, we met Prashant, a marathon cyclist and Economist by passion. He had also come there through Stay On Skill programme.
Till noon, we wandered and explored the places that google suggested us ( we will be writing about that in the next episode)
In the evening, Ashith took Prashant and us to a wonderful place to enjoy the sunset. We don’t know how to express what we saw in words. ‘Amazing’ would just not be the perfect word for it. The place was trees , water canals and huge aqueducts. It was simply one of the best moments on the whole trip. We went for just enjoying the sunset, but the beauty of the place made us stay till the moon came up.
At night we had delicious authentic home made Coorg food which was prepared by Mutthi amma, she is the foot hill camp’s official chef.
We were excited for the next day’s plan, and out of excitement we asked the same to Ashith. His reply was “ just wait and watch, its full of surprises” .
DAY 3
Morning at around 7:30am, we started off on our motorbikes without knowing where Ashith is taking us to.
As our beloved host said, it was really a surprise — he was showing us the true Coorg. The experience was so wonderful, that it needs to be shared in a separate post. Subscribe to this publication to follow up on it.
It was great to get disconnected from city traffic and enjoy in the cradle of nature.
Here’s our video review of the place:
If you plan to visit The Foothill camp, which you must, and meet Ashith “the rockstar host” you per head expenditure for one day would come to be approx INR 1650. This includes accommodation in Coleman tents, homemade food, barbeque, and cycle tour.
To book your stay at the FootHill Camp — go here.
To travel with Stay On Skill, and get free accomodation — go here.
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